St. Luke's Episcopal Church
Cleveland, Tennessee

Second Sunday of Easter
April 11, 2010
The Reverend Deacon Art Bass

A Sure and Certain Hope

An Easter faith is a resurrection faith. Last week on Easter Sunday, we celebrated the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Belief in the resurrection of Christ is the foundation of our faith, around which everything else is built and premised.

But there is another part to our resurrection faith. I am speaking of that part which for us, gives meaning and purpose to the resurrection of Christ. I am speaking of our belief in the resurrection of the dead.

As Christians, we believe that Christ was the first, but not the only one whom God will resurrect. We believe that just as Christ was raised, so God will raise us also. Faith in the first part of this theological equation leads to faith in the second part. The church has always maintained and supported a complete resurrection faith, faith in both parts.

On this second Sunday of Easter, I want to talk about this other, second part of our resurrection faith, our belief in the resurrection of the dead, the resurrection of the body.

The church has affirmed its belief in this doctrine from the very earliest of times. St. Paul speaks of the resurrection of the dead in his epistles. In the Apostles Creed, we say I believe in the resurrection of the body, and in the Nicene Creed on Sundays we say together as the Christian community that we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

When we bury our dead, we do so with words which go all the way back to the first prayer book of 1549. As we commit the body or the ashes of the departed to the ground, the priest proclaims for us all that we do so “in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection.” That phrase is unique to our prayer book, but the words are well known to Christians of all denominations.

But in spite of all that is said in liturgy about our hope for our resurrection, the resurrection of the dead, it is seldom mentioned by anyone outside of church. It is not so unusual to hear people say, quite casually, “when I die, I want to go to heaven.” But when was the last time in conversation, you heard someone say, “when I die, I hope to be raised again, to be resurrected.“ In our culture, we Christians have allowed ourselves to become uncomfortable with those words. Resurrection of the dead has become almost an inconvenient truth of our faith. We find it much easier to speak of souls in heaven and to let it go at that.

In March 2007, three years ago, I was with my mother in her doctor's office in Winchester. I went to high school with Dr. Zimmerman, and my mother had been one of his favorite teachers. He had specifically asked that I be there that day.

He told us that he had reviewed all my mother's tests and imaging, and that my mother had colon cancer, a very aggressive form of colon cancer, which had already spread to other organs. He said there was nothing he could do, except to take measures to help relieve her pain when the time came for that.

I asked the question, “How long?” Although at that time, mother still seemed to be doing fairly well, Dr. Zimmerman's bottom line answer was a few months, maybe three or four. “It is a very aggressive malignancy.”

A few weeks later on Easter Sunday I took my mother to her church in Winchester. That afternoon, she asked if we could drive around, and of course we did. We looked at houses and scenery and talked about events past and present, but little, if anything, was said about her condition.

Then mother asked me to take her to the cemetery to visit my father's grave. We often did this whenever I came to visit, but this time was different. As we both stood there in silence, looking down at that grave and headstone, it was with the mutual realization that her body would soon lie there also.

Finally, mother spoke. She said, “In church we say we believe in the resurrection of the dead, even the resurrection of the body. Can such a thing be possible?” Then looking squarely at me, she asked, “Do you believe that?”

During my adult years as a Christian, this was a question I had visited many times in my own mind, and frankly, there had been occasions when I had some doubts. However, I had resolved those doubts many years ago, so on that day, I was able to respond to my mother quite truthfully: “Yes, Mother, I believe it.”

When she heard my answer, mother smiled and nodded her head as an approving parent would. Then she said, “Good, because I believe it too. In fact, I've never doubted it, although I have thought a lot about it and prayed about it too. I don't pretend to fully understand it. I don't know how God will do it, and I don't know what it will be like, but I know it will happen.”

In today's gospel, we hear how Thomas and the other apostles came to have faith in the resurrection of Jesus once they actually saw the risen Lord. Once they saw the wounds of the cross and the spear still visible on the body of the risen Lord, they knew and understood that the Jesus who had been raised was the same Jesus who had died on Good Friday.

The wounds to the body of the resurrected Jesus could not only be seen, they could even be touched and felt. The realization that Jesus had been raised in body was so powerful, that Thomas was moved to exclaim: “My Lord and my God.”

Unless it has been in a vision or a religious experience, none of us have ever seen the wounds of Christ. It was for us that the gospels were written, so that we might also know the truth and believe in it. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

For two thousand years now the gospels together with the works and accomplishments of the saints, Christian men and women inspired and empowered by the Holy Spirit, have stood as strong and potent witnesses to the resurrected Christ. The result of this has been that today, in this country, you and I live in a culture which is predominantly Christian. Most of us were raised in a Christian church of some denomination. Most of us can say without hesitancy, “I believe God raised Jesus from the grave and restored him to life.” As Fr. Joel said last Sunday, this is the very core of our faith.

If we can proclaim that, then why, outside of church, do we seem reluctant to say, “My hope is that like Jesus, I too will be raised, that I will be resurrected in body.”

This is not a new problem. In his first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul wrote, “How can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised.”

The problem for the Corinthians was that their Greek philosophical background did not allow for bodies to be resurrected. Before they became Christians, they had been taught that only the soul survives death and that after death, the soul would never again become a whole or complete person.

But why does this difficulty with resurrection of the dead seem in some ways to still be around today. Perhaps it is simply because we don't really understand what resurrection of the body means.

First of all, it does not mean that at some time in the future, corpses reanimated by God will start clawing their way to the surface. There will be no Christian version of the “Night of the Living Dead.”

Our prayer book catechism defines the term “resurrection of the body.” If you want to look at it, it can be found on page 862 under the Christian Hope section. It says that resurrection of the body means “that God will raise us from death in the fullness of one being, that we may live with Christ in the communion of the saints”.

God created us for this life as complete persons. We have body, mind, spirit, personality and character. When God raises us to new life in Christ, it will again be as complete persons. But when we are raised, our wholeness, our completeness, will have been perfected. St. Paul tells us that our resurrection bodies will be new and changed from the bodies we have now. Our new bodies will have a perfection that suits a spiritual existence with Christ and the saints. They will be bodies designed not for life in this world, but for life in the world to come. In our perfection and in our completeness, we will still be persons, and we will be the persons who we are, but cleansed from all sin through Christ.

On the afternoon of Pentecost Sunday three years ago, I was back in the little cemetery in my hometown. We buried my mother that day.

I have not been back since then, though I'm sure that someday I will. It is not that I do not cherish the memory of my mother. It is because I know the woman, the person, whom I knew and loved, is not there.

I know it, because when we buried her, it was in the hope which we as Christians all have and share. It was in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life.